In the 1960s, Ken Price (American, 1935–2012) took a particularly biomorphic turn with his series of luridly erotic “eggs.” Painted with bold, fantastical colors, an egg’s shell is merely the outer aspect of an object with a rich inner world suggested by protuberances emerging from apertures cut into the form. The idea of an inner world permeating or transgressing an outer one recurs throughout Funk art, and is akin to the relationship between the personal and the public.

Price committed himself to working with clay after studying for a year with Peter Voulkos at the Los Angeles County Art Institute.

Nadel, Dan. What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art, 1960 to the Present. Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island of Design, 2014.